MATCH MADE
by Kaoru4
Summary: Inuyasha is unmarried and plans to stay that way, and to change that, Kagome has been invited to the ranch. Inuyasha finds theres something special about her, but hes determined not to give in. And Kagome had deep secrets of her own...


#Disclaimer… I don't own them and I never will.  
  
Hey guys, I haven't written in a whiiiiile, and for good reason… lol my writing sucks… but I think this one will be muuuuuch better. Have fun reading it, please review!  
  
MATCH MADE  
By Kaoru  
  
Chapter One  
  
A tiny sparrow fluttered onto the window ledge of the rehabilitation center, unaware of the thin glass separating it from the human being on the other side. Kagome sat very still, watching the bird hop from side to side. Soon, another bird joined him, and after a few chirps, flew away. The tiny sparrow soon took flight also. She sighed.   
  
"Kagome?"   
  
She raised her head blankly toward the doorway. A tall woman with long black hair and blue eyes stood there.   
  
"Oh. Hello Sango."  
  
Sango rushed into the room to give Kagome an embrace. A cloud of expensive perfume enveloped Kagome, and she was relieved when her friend pulled away.   
  
"I'm sorry," Sango said, her blue eyes stricken. "I've come at a bad time. I know you usually rest after lunch. I should have waited. I don't know what I was thinking."  
  
"It's alright. Im not tired, just rude." Kagome offered a smile.  
  
"That's impossible! You don't have a rude bone in your body!" Sango protested.  
  
"If I do, I probably broke it." Kagome murmured. Her attempt at humor failed.  
  
Sango straightened quickly. "I should go."  
  
"I'm alright, really, I am." Kagome reapeated. It was annoying to have to continue telling everyone that. Would they feel better if she added, for the moment. For as long as I don't have to think about anything… as long as I don't let myself remember?  
  
Sango didn't seem to know what to do, what to say. The two of them had been friends since childhood. They went to high school and even university together. But Sango seemed at a loss to handle such a difficult situation. Only how many people would know how to handle it? Would she react any different if the tables were turned? After the passage of four months hadn't most of the appropiate phrases had dried up?  
  
Kagome rubbed the side of her head next to her temple, trying to ease the dull pain. The headaches could come and go for moths, the doctor had said. Well, it had been months, and they still continued.   
  
"Miroku is waiting," Sango said tightly. "I have to go. Our lunch date…"  
  
Sango longed to escape. It was obvious in the way she held herself, in her subtle glances at the door. Was she afraid that is she stayed long enough, that Kagome might explode in a frenzy of grief and loss? Or cry out in indescribable pain and ask aloud the question that seared her? The question that no one could answer: Why her? Why had she survived when all the others…  
  
Kagome severed the thought, afraid that if it continued that she might make Sango's fears come true. She forced a smile. "Tell Miroku I said hello."  
  
Sango smiled tremendously and hurried out the door.   
  
Once alone, Kagome clenched her hands around her coverlet tightly. At times the strain of dealing with people was too much for her. Watching the few relatives that she had left, her father's friends, her mother's friends, her own friends, watching them watch her. Sensing their anxiety that at any second she might shatter. Knowing their fear that it might happen during their visit… yet they felt like they had to visit because of long years of devotion or blood ties.  
  
She took a series of steadying breaths. If there was one thing that she wasn't, it was fragile. If she had been going to great, it would have happened while she sat strapped in what was left of the twin engine plane, immobilized, unable to even stretch her hand far enough to touch the bodies of her father or the man she planned to marry. For two days, she had sat there, while the rescuers searched, with her father, Kyoguma, Rutou, Matsumi, the pilot dead all around her.  
  
No matter how heard she tried, she couldn't remember how the plane actually went down. She remembered everyone in their places, papers being passed back and forth, her father practicing sections of the speech he planned to make at the campaign rally for one of his associates. She remembered laughter and jokes and Kouga leaning close to press her hand and steal a kiss. Then something happened. The pilot cursed, the plane dipped radically to one side, then … nothing until sometime later when she regained consciousness.   
  
The small lunch Kagome had eaten a half hour earlier made her stomach churn, just as her stomach had churned when she'd awakened to the horror that surrounded her. Nothing had looked the same. The fuselage was titled forward and to the left. Debris was scattered everywhere, jumbled luggage, briefcases, sheets of paper. Rocks and dirt were somehow tumbled into the mix. The branch of the tree jutted through the window at her side. A hole where a hole shouldn't be let sunlight pour in from above and wind whistled softly through the cabin.  
  
At first, Kagome's mind hadn't let her take in the rest. It was as If shock was somehow protecting her. Then slowly, realization kicked in. They were no longer in the air, and somehow they had fallen to the earth, and then she first saw the bodies.   
  
She hadn't screamed. In fact, no sound had passed her open lips as she stared at Matsumi, hanging upside down from a seat across the aisle, a seat that angles crazily over the one in front- Kouga's seat. Then she saw Kouga. His head was cocked oddly to one side. He might have been taking a nap. She reacher out to wake him, or prod him, but she couldn't get close enough. Then she saw her father, his body twisted, his back pressed against the nearest window, blood congealing around a gaping wound in his head, She could see one of Kyoguma's hands, resting palm up on the floor next to his seat. It never moved. The pilot was half in and half out of the missing windshield, on his back, his eyes staring blankly at the sky.   
  
Only the wind made a sound as Kagome sat frozen in place. Sometime later, she never knew how much because of the passage of times lost all meaning, she began to whimper. And as she looked again from person to person , he eyes lingering longest on Kouga and her father, the full impact of what had happened finally registered, and her whimpering grew to a terrified wail.   
  
Frantically, she tried to extricate herself. Her hands shook and her teeth clattered, as she battled to push the tree branch aside, thinking it was the one who held her in captivity. But when it gave way and she still couldn't move, she gave attention to her seat belt. She released it, but she still couldn't stand up. She pounded her legs in fustration… and felt nothing.Then she saw the next horror. The bone in her left leg was protruding through the skin just below her knee. Beads of cold sweat broke out on her body as she sank back against the seat cushion.   
  
Oh god… She tried to think of what she should do, but her mind kept screaming for her father and for Kouga.   
  
This had to be a bad dream. Soon someone was going to wake her and tell her that they had landed and she had better get the lead out and get to work. But pain was starting to gnaw at her left side beneath her left rib cage offered little room for doubt. Neither did the blood she saw on her fingertips when she withdrew them from a painful bump on the head.   
  
She cried out for help again and again… Surely someone would hear! But the windonly gave answer. Where were they? How far had they come? When they didn't show up at the rally, someone would notice. Someone had to notice! How long then would it take for a search party form? How long before a downed plane would be found? She didn't want to die, not out here, not like this. Yet part of her knew that she had nothing left to live for, Why hadn't she dies along with the others? Whey should she be the only one to survive? Her mother had died two years before, leaving a huge gap in her and her father's lives, Now her father was gone. And Kouga.  
  
Emotion clogged her throat, burned in her chest, made the discomfort in her side increase, She didn't want to live without Kouga. She loved him! Shed just found him! He'd just found her!  
  
She started to whimper again, soft and low like a child. Then mercifully she blacked out, allowed at last to sink into a temporary oblivion.  
  
The day and a half that followed was enough to test even the strongest of spirits. Pain and thirst were her constant companions, Ther first time she had felt a tingling sensation in her lagsm shed exclaimed with joy. Her paralysis wasn't permanent! Later, though, shed longed for the earlier numbness as the nerves in her injured leg made themselves known with demanding ferocity. Each time she moved, trying to search for the water bottles or food, she knew to be on board, she was stopped by excruciating pain.   
  
She began to float in and out of consciousness, images in her mind slipping from reality to dreams and from dreams back to reality. One realm blended meaninglessly with the other. Sometimes her father spoke to her, other times Kouga. Both told her not to try and follow them. To fight for her life.   
  
She heard neither plane that spotted hers not the helicopter that hovered overhead before landing a distance away from the shallow canyon where she was trapped. Her clearest memory was hands reaching for her. Hands and a pair of strong arms.  
  
"The others," shed croaked brokenly, trying to direct the rescuers attention away from herself.   
  
She could still heard the compassion in the mans voice as he and another man ministered to her. "It's all right," he said. "Everythings going to be fine now. You just sit back and let us take care of things."  
  
She had been letting other people take care of things ever since.   
  
A nurse strode briskly into the room. She was Kagome's age, in her late twenties, but the antithesis of all that Kagome felt a the moment. A cheerful smile titled the young woman's lips, her thick brown hair bounced against her shoulders as she walked and she excluded an aura of good health and contentment.  
  
"Hello" the nurse said as she automatically straightened the flowers. Intelligent eyes flickered over Kagome in professional assesment. "You look tired. Too many visitors today?" Before Kagome could answer, the nurse went on. "You have more people to come to see you than anyone else here. It must be nice to be so popular."  
  
Kagome pushed a tendril of her black hair away from her face. She knew what she looked like now and she didn't much care. Her hair fell limply past her shoulders, her blue eyes one so open with curiosity were now dull. She found it difficult to hold her shoulders back when instinct urged her to curl forward and withdraw from everyone. She mustered a smile. She didn't need to pretend with the nursing staff. Theyd seen her at her worst. "They are mostly people my father knew in the legislature."  
  
"But for them to keep coming, he must have been a very special man."  
  
"He was." Kagome said quickly.  
  
"And they care about you too. Believe me, people don't come to hospitals or even rehabilitation centers as nice as this one to visit unless they feel something special for the patient. The smell of the hospital makes them feel vulnerable, The don't like the think it could be them lying here." Her smile was rueful. "Sorry, We touched on one of my pet peeves, You aren't going to have to listen to my tirades much longer though are you? Didn't I hear that you are going to be released next week?"  
  
"So I'm told," Kagome replied.   
  
The nurse frowned slightly. "Have you made arrangements? Do you have somewhere to go? Someone to stay with you?"  
  
"I seem to have a wide array of choices. I haven't settled on any particular offer yet."  
  
"Because you don't want to hurt anyone's feelings? My suggestions is that you do what's best for you. Don't worry about other people right now. You are the one who's going to have to finish getting well."  
  
The nurse stood by as Kagome walked slowly back to bed.  
  
"Would you like me to close the blinds a bit?" she asked as Kagome settled on the fluffed up pillows.  
  
"That would be wonderful," Kagome murmured, her eyelids falling shut.  
  
The nurse moved so quietly, Kagome wasn't even aware of her leaving the room.  
lol i had to edit it, because i said the wrong name before... I was talking to my friend and I wrote her name instead of Kagome... SORRY!!!  
What do you think?! PLEASE PRESS THAT BUTTON AND REVIEW!!! Yeah the characters were OOC at times… and this chapter was a lot like the prolouge the story gets much better I promise! and this is a Kag/Inu fic… but I couldn't bear to see Inu dead. You'll see later on in the story… PLEASE REVIEW!!! 


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